Sound Janet

The recent form tells an interesting tale. Back in her last six races, she has twice finished second, which suggests she absolutely belongs at this level — she's not being embarrassed, she's just being beaten. The frustrating part is what has happened since those two runner-up finishes: a fifth, a twelfth, a sixth, and most recently a ninth. That's the kind of sequence that makes you wonder whether she had a little purple patch and has since gone off the boil, or whether she simply hasn't found the right race on the right day. She raced just yesterday, so this is a horse very much in the thick of it right now.

Her trainer, Julie Camacho, operates out of Norton in North Yorkshire and has been in fine form this season — 46 winners sent out, which is a serious number for a yard of that size and reflects a team that knows how to get a horse ready to run. Camacho has a reputation for placing her horses shrewdly, so the fact that Sound Janet keeps lining up suggests the team still believes there's a win in her somewhere.

The level she competes at — Class 5, which sits near the bottom of the British racing pyramid — means these are races designed to give horses like her a chance to win. She's had four cracks at this grade and converted none of them, which is mildly surprising given the two second-place finishes she put in earlier. Sometimes a horse will spend months knocking on the door before it finally kicks it open. Sound Janet has done enough to suggest she isn't hopelessly outclassed — she just needs the stars to align. Whether that moment comes soon, or at all, is the question the Camacho yard will be quietly mulling over.